At CES 2014, Razer is showing off one of the craziest and most beautiful PCs ever imagined: A fully modular PC tower that is cooled with mineral oil. Each of the components, whether they’re graphics cards, hard drives, or RAM, is stored within a self-contained pod that can be switched out at any time. Each pod is sealed and contains two self-sealing ports that, when plugged into the system’s central spine, allow mineral oil to circulate and keep the components cool. Dubbed Project Christine, the modular PC is currently just a prototype, but if everything goes to plan Razer hopes to have a finalized version of Christine ready for CES 2015.

According to Razer’s CEO Min-Liang Tan, Project Christine is meant to bring build-your-own computing to the masses. Tan argues that one of the main perks of the PC is flexibility and upgradability, and yet due to the complexity of working inside a PC, the DIY thing has always been the reserve of enthusiasts. Project Christine hopes to change that. While it’s a nice idea, we’re pretty dubious about whether it’s actually technologically possible — and even if it is, we expect it will cost so much that only enthusiasts will be interested, anyway. (Read: Will the PC be replaced by the Apple iStack?)

At the moment, Christine is an incredibly high-concept prototype that, if it ever made it to reality, would probably only sell a few dozen units. Still, let’s discuss it anyway, because let’s be honest: It’s frickin’ awesome. Christine consists of a central spine containing the motherboard and mineral oil reservoir, and self-contained modules that plug into it. According to Razer, these modules can contain a CPU, GPU, hard drive, SSD, RAM, or power supply. Multiple-GPU configurations are supported (the prototype at CES 2014 is a triple-SLI setup). The motherboard, at least in Christine’s current setup, is not upgradeable. Integrated graphics are also available, if no GPU modules are plugged in. (See: Motorola and Google unveil upgradeable modular smartphone platform.)

The connectors on the main spine of Project Christine. PCIe is the big rectangular block, and oil is on the left and right side. [Image credit: Engadget]

On one end of each module is a proprietary connector, plus two self-sealing ports that allow mineral oil to circulate through the module, keeping the components cool. Tan says that everything is connected via PCIe 3.0, though that’s probably just marketingese. While it might theoretically be possible to connect the CPU and RAM to the motherboard via the PCIe bus, it would be a bad, bad idea due to high latency and low bandwidth. It’s possible that Razer has MacGyvered some kind of special, low-latency PCIe solution powered by a custom ASIC — but realistically, the CPU and RAM will probably just be connected using their normal buses, leaving PCIe for the storage and graphics modules.

Even if the CPU and RAM do use their own buses instead of PCIe, there are still a whole raft of problems with making them modular. In a normal PC, the CPU and RAM are socketed on the motherboard. The hundreds of traces (wires) that run between the CPU, RAM, and other controllers/bridges are very short. If you move the CPU or RAM off the motherboard, the wires would have to be very long — and that could introduce all sorts of timing and crosstalk issues. It’s possible that Razer have completely overengineered Christina and given her absolutely ludicrous internals. But it’s also possible that Christina, at least in her current incarnation, just isn’t viable.

Don’t get me wrong: It’s completely viable to have a PC with modular storage, PSU, and graphics cards. A plug-and-play oil cooling solution is completely genius, too. But unless Razer can pull off a rather miraculous feat of engineering, I just don’t see the modular design extending to the CPU and RAM. A better solution — and probably a cheaper solution — would be to have a “base module” that consists of the motherboard, RAM, and CPU that have been engineered to be easily replaced. It might not look quite as dramatic as the current Christine incarnation, but it would still be pretty darn cool. (Read: Oil cooling: Deep fried, or deep energy savings?)

Currently there’s no word on either a release date or expected MSRP of Project Christine, but spring 2015 and a price point of around $300 for a barebones system (just the central spine) sounds about right. Because Razer will probably be the only one who makes the modules (at least to start with), you are probably looking at a premium price of $2,000 or more for a top-end system. Significantly more than building your own PC, eh, Mr Razer CEO?

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It’s a step in the right direction. Reminds me of the modular cell phone.

James

Oh because it’s modular, right?

massau

is’t a desktop modular enough for you? if they did something like this for a laptop than it would be cool.

Kevin Reedy

This must mean that if your laptop leaks you will have a lap full of mineral oil? That’s cool?

Friedrich Winkler

The Cpu and Ram are in the same module where I would also expect the chipset to be so that part of the project looks to viable

Naipier

Interesting to say the least. Here’s hoping it’s cost effective… and if not, that they can make it so.

FrankNitty II

Yeah I have to agree. How much and will the components be equally expensive. As a PC builder, I look for cost effective 90% of the time unless the customer request a system with no budget cap.

Bosco

If nothing else, this could help drive down prices of non-modular, old fashioned (current type) of components.

standard

One for the ‘cautious optimism’ pile, until we see some official prices.
I get this feeling it’s going to be laughably expensive.
That aside, it looks great and the ease of changing components is brilliant. Top it off with water cooled everything and it’s an impressive bit of kit.

Mathew Binkley

I can actually see this taking off in a couple of years. As Moore’s law slows down, it becomes easier to rationalize spending more money on a computer because it will stay relevant longer. Instead of buying a new one every 3 years, you might buy one once a decade.

I recall the old “information furnace” idea: a house has one really big central computer, driving a bunch of dumb displays. Or Valve’s idea of streaming games from one computer to another. This would go well with something like that.

massau

moores law will stay alive for at least 20 years, we had some time that power consumption raised a lt faster and that was the time performance increase really fast.

now we need power efficiency, I think stacking will keep moores low alive for atleast 8 years longer whit stacking and scaling maybe 20 years whit new materials. (price/transistor version) i think stacking can go up to 16 and eventually to 32high. we will get stuck just past 10 nm and we will switch to a new material, have a second clock war (100GHz). also fully 3d ,multilayer structures are an option if they can get good yields.

Mathew Binkley

I work in academic high-performance computing, and my day job is managing a 1000-node computer cluster. Trust me, Moore’s Law, in the “real-world performance doubles every 18 months” is on very serious life support and it can probably hear dead relatives beckoning it into the light. While progress will almost certainly continue to be made even decades from now, the “doubling time” is increasing, rapidly.

massau

yea you have multiple versions of the law and thats the problem. some say it is doubling the transistor count in a chip / package every X time, others say doubling performance/watt, some say halving cost/transistor others say halving the size of a transistor, the last one is going to end sooner.
the second one might stay if we switch materials. first and 3th one can only exist together.

also there was another law that was an extend on moores law and counted in numbers of chips made instead of time. this helped factoring in the economical ciris. (it was in an article on EEtimes but it is about a year ago i think)

James

“unless Razer can pull off a rather miraculous feat of engineering…” Really? You think this would be a miraculous feat of engineering? We’re sending robots to Mars; we built a 27km long particle accelerator under Switzerland and you think this concept would be so difficult to achieve.

AMPlifier

Well sure, it may not seem miraculous, but they have to make it work, and keep it cheap. Going to Mars isn’t cheap. Sure, particle accelerators are great feats of engineering, but Nvidia and AMD are still having trouble having good SLI and Crossfire scaling with more than two graphics cards.

Bosco

This is the direction I saw Steam Box going. It would probably work better for that anyway… especially if the modular items were limited (think Nintendo64 4MB ram upgrade). Could have 4 slots. Ram, CPU, GPU, Internal disk(s) Steam would just have to make the standard, possibly a few company’s make the middle hub/stand part, then everyone else starts cranking out plugable components. If Razor makes the connections, either others would adapt to fit, or you could only buy supported propitiatory components, the latter of which I would only see Apple do… as they have always done.

Bosco

Saddly, Google TV was sitting on a gold mine. All they needed was a Google TV with some updated gaming hardware (or vise versa), and they’d have a whole App store of games ready for TV play.

Falcon D. Stormvoice

2,000 dollars is top-end? Lmao. I can easily sink 6,000 dollars into a PC rig and still have significant room for improvement.

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